Featherweight fun: La Cenerentola, at Nevill Holt Opera, reviewed

‘Goodness Triumphant’ is the subtitle of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and you’d better believe he delivers. It’s the sweetest thing imaginable; true, the stepsisters are awful, but their spite bubbles over in streams of such sunny major-key effervescence that it’s hard to hold it against them. As for their father Don Magnifico, you can’t seriously hiss a villain whose principal ambition is unhindered access to the palace wine cellar. It’s testimony to just how deftly Rossini handles his material that the final scene – in which the now-royal Cinderella asks only that her stepfather address her, for the first time, as ‘daughter’ – can still make you go as gooey as a chocolate fondant.

Perfect summer opera fare, then, and a shrewd choice for a company that has to play it safer than most. Country-house opera festivals are a warm-weather species. Nevill Holt Opera, in Leicestershire, is the most northerly major outpost, and even that’s now in doubt. In March this year they cancelled one of their two planned productions (insufficient ticket sales, apparently), and shortly afterwards their artistic director resigned. Yet they have a gorgeous location and probably the best small opera theatre of any of these festivals. Plus, right by the door, they’ve got the ‘Ed Stone’: the ill-fated Miliband monolith from the 2015 election campaign, subsequently acquired by Nevill Holt’s owners for the lulz. Instant comedy before you’ve even taken your seat.

This Cenerentola was a little delight: a cheerful staging from Owen Horsley (the designer was Simon Wells) that updated the fairy tale to a bubblegum 1960s, with a boogying male chorus kitted out like the Beatles in drainpipes and mop tops. Horsley gave his mostly youthful cast (another Nevill Holt strength) ample space to bring their characters to life, and they ran with it: whirling through Rossini’s dizzying patter songs and supercharged coloratura with easy charm and an irrepressible sense of enjoyment.

So the stepsisters (Lorena Paz Nieto and Nancy Holt) sulked and pouted in nylon negligées.